WITHOUT FEAR, the third in the Martha Beale series, exposes the iconoclastic heroine to the grandiose – albeit sinister - realm of the former Comte de Survilliers, Joseph Bonaparte, at his estate Point Breeze on the Delaware River while also drawing her into the dangerous world of Philadelphia’s textile workers. The time is March, 1843; the city (“the Athens of America”) is a place divided between the heights of culture and sophistication, as epitomized by the Bonaparte family; and the depths of squalor experienced by the mill hands and other common laborers.

When a headless corpse is discovered at Point Breeze, Martha is drawn into a shadowy world of mistaken identities and thwarted desires that transcend social class. What appears to be a solitary case of murder soon takes an even darker turn as complex clues implicate rich and poor alike.